Cambridge Analytica shuts down amid Facebook scandal

Cambridge Analytica announced Wednesday it is shutting down amid
accusations the data-mining firm improperly accessed data from millions
of Facebook users.

The British-based company and its affiliate, SCL Elections, are filing
insolvency proceedings in Britain and bankruptcy proceedings in the
United States.

Cambridge Analytica said a "siege of media coverage" of its dealings
with Facebook has driven away customers, leaving the business no longer
viable. It said reports about how it obtained and used Facebook user
data were unfounded.

"Despite the company's efforts to correct the record, [it] has been
vilified for activities that are not only legal, but also widely
accepted as a standard component of online advertising in both the
political and commercial arenas," the company said in a statement.

Cambridge University academic Aleksandr Kogan and his company Global
Science Research used the quiz app "This Is Your Digital Life" to gather
data on 270,000 users -- and the users' friends, who did not
participate in the quiz -- which it then shared with Cambridge Analytica
in 2015. The company used the demographic information from 87 million
Facebook users to target political advertising.

In March, whistleblower and Cambridge Analytica co-founder Christopher
Wylie revealed the company was holding onto user data without their
consent even after Facebook told the company to delete it. Wylie said
the company was initially funded by billionaire Robert Mercer and his
boss was former Breitbart founder and White House adviser Steve Bannon.

Wylie said leadership at Cambridge Analytica wanted to fight a "culture war."

"Rules don't matter for them. For them, this is a war, and it's all
fair," he said. "They want to fight a culture war in America."

"Cambridge Analytica was supposed to be the arsenal of weapons to fight that culture war."

Wylie said he used coding to execute Bannon and Mercer's idea to combine
big data and social media to target Facebook users based on
psychological profiles.

On March 20, Cambridge Analytica suspended CEO Alexander Nix and said it
was investigating comments Nix made in an undercover recording. He said
the company could secretly compromise political rivals by arranging
smear campaigns, setting up encounters with prostitutes and staging
bribery situations.

Counsel Julian Malins, who conducted Cambridge Analytica's internal
investigation, said allegations against the firm were not "borne out by
the facts."

"I had full access to all members of staff and documents in the
preparation of my report," Malins said. "My findings entirely reflect
the amazement of the staff, on watching the television programmes and
reading the sensationalistic reporting, that any of these media outlets
could have been talking about the company for which they worked. Nothing
of what they heard or read resonated with what they actually did for a
living."

President Donald Trump's campaign used the services of Cambridge Analytica for the 2016 presidential election.